Re: Race Relations and Korea

[Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>]

At 04:15 PM 4/5/2000 -0700, Young Kim wrote:
>The History Channel footage (I forgot its title) showed Mac' G2 chief (Gen.
>Willowsby sp?) who had Gen. Franco's (of Spain) portrait hung in his office.

Ah!  Charles Willoughby.  "Sir Charles" to the rest of the staff.  A 'G2'
is the chief intelligence officer, not the "second in command";  in fact,
the G2 is third down the pecking order in most situations (G3/Plans,
Operations and Training comes first, then G4/Logistics, then G2, and
finally G1/Personnel, though, in other situations, the G1 can out-vote the
G4 and G2.  The US staff system is notorious for ignoring the importance of
intelligence.)  And Willoughby was a notoriously poor intelligence officer,
so MacArthur had had him effectively bypassed by the time the Korean War
broke out.

In short, Willoughby was a personal friend of MacArthur but had no real
influence within the Tokyo headquarters and had been restricted to only
routine duties by 1950.  You might enjoy reading about Willoughby in any of
the three standard biographies of MacArthur (Manchester, Perrett, or
Clayton James) or, for a more favorable portrait, in Allison Ind's ALLIED
INTELLIGENCE BUREAU.

There was a picture of Franco, as I recall, sent him by Franco in the early
1930's.  The possession of such a picture hardly made Willoughby a Nazi
sympathizer of any sort.  Heck, I have George Wallace's autograph
somewhere, and I disagreed with him on virtually all of his politics.  

Thanks for the clarification.

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
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